Indian capital for Sydney tech start-up
06 May 2024 - Investment activity
Peak XV Partners, formerly Sequoia India and South-East Asia, has led a $3.85 million seed-funding round for Sydney technology start-up Brainfish.
The round has been supported by Australian firms Macdoch Ventures and Black Sheep Capital, plus US and local angel investors including Justus Hammer, chief executive of MadPaws (ASX: MPA).
Brainfish previously raised pre-seed funding of $1.15 million.
The company claims its artificial intelligence-driven self-service technology platform will answer most customer questions for online businesses and marketplaces ten times faster than interacting with a support team member and much more accurately than via a bot.
The business was founded in April last year by former SiteMinder product builders Daniel Kimber, chief executive, and Ajain Vivek Thankaswamy, chief technology officer.
Brainfish claims a 65% month-on-month growth trajectory since it went live 12 months ago and already has more than 300,000 users in Australia, the US and Singapore. The technology is used by MadPaws (ASX: MPA) and Airtasker (ASX: ART).
Kimber said: “Customer support hasn’t changed in decades, and whilst tooling is better, people today want quick answers that are accurate and contextualised.”
Brainfish says its proprietary AI search function combines business knowledge and contextual understanding of customers to deliver personalised answers instantaneously.
Image: Brainfish founders Ajain Vivek Thankaswamy and Daniel Kimber.